I think many facebook users complain that facebook doesn't resemble a real social network enough, and in many ways, I'm glad it doesn't. This author doesn't like that he hears from a lot of people he doesn't talk to much, and to me, that kind of means that yes, I have my friends I interact with often, but I also have facebook to bring me closer to the people who may just not be in that inner circle yet. I wouldn't have the time or energy to pursue those relationships on my own and facebook makes it much easier. That may sound unnatural, but if we were using computers to accomplish only what we would be accomplishing without them, then why compute? Facebook is better at keeping up with my acquaintances and friends than I am, and that's why I use it. That doesn't make my real life social network any less important.

As for the privacy stuff, I don't know much about data mining, but I do know that there seems to be an interesting relationship between total data and what can be done on a person scale when it comes to privacy invasion by giant companies. As the information collected becomes more intricate, more data is required, i.e. every visited page with a like button on it ever, and the data becomes increasingly difficult to mine. I don't like the idea of a single person poking around my internet history, but then I remember that unless I were a felon, I just don't see facebook having the resources for that to happen (not that they absolutely couldn't, but that they couldn't target ME, one in 500 million, without targeting a large group that I am a part of, say, the state of new york, which would be a very difficult task. This is a question of probabilistic capability, not absolute capability.). Maybe I'm wrong, let me know if I am. This could be an important lesson in online privacy for me.